Free and legal MP3: The Middle East

Slowly unfolding, deeply engaging

“Blood” – The Middle East

Over a stately acoustic guitar noodle that wouldn’t sound out of place on a mid-career Genesis album, “Blood” unfolds slowly yet engages the ear instantly. (That’s an advanced maneuver in the rock’n’roll style book, by the way.) The anticipation is delicious; the song doesn’t fully cook until 2:55 but I don’t think you’ll be bored. Engaging musicianship, sensitive and creative arrangement, affecting vocals, intriguing and well-crafted lyrics, short-term melodies, long-term structure: this six-piece from northern Queensland offers a full arsenal, even–what the heck–a children’s chorus before the thing is through.

I read somewhere that this song tells the story of three different relationships, two ended by death, one by divorce, but don’t expect to pick that up easily; the band’s singer has a lovely, Bon Iver-esque tenor that functions more like an instrument than a tale-teller. We pick up the occasional sonorous phrase–“She woke up in a cold sweat on the floor”; “Burned by the sun too often when she was young”–but as the song develops musically, the words fade into the fabric of the composition, eventually to be left aside entirely once the central musical motif–a refrain first heard as a whistled melody at 2:01–rises in climactic, wordless, choral repetition two-thirds of the way through (the aforementioned children’s chorus).

Formed in 2005 in a quiet village near the Great Barrier Reef, the Middle East self-released an album entitled The Recordings of the Middle East in 2008. And then decided to break up. And eight months later decided to re-form, with some personnel changes. The original album was then given an Australia-wide re-release in abridged form as an EP by Spunk Records, an Australian label that happens also to release a lot of big-time American indie rock (Spoon, the Shins, Joanna Newsom, Okkervil River, et al). The EP made it to the U.S. late in 2009, and the band itself arrived for the first time this spring and is currently touring here. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Love Language

Brisk, shuffly indie pop

“Heart to Tell” – the Love Language

This one also begins with an acoustic guitar riff, but an entirely different kind that goes in an entirely different, happy-shuffly Shins-meet-the-Left-Banke direction. A brisk slice of indie pop sparkle.

Attentive visitors may recall the Love Language from “Lalita,” a song featured here last May that ended up on the year-end “Fingertips Favorites” list. “Heart to Tell” likewise swings on a pronounced one-two rhythm, but with a gentler vibe than “Lalita.” This time around the band has jettisoned the distorted vocals and funneled its penchant for harsh guitars into one short–but memorable–instrumental break. Also jettisoned this time around, in fact, is the band itself–Raleigh-based master mind Stuart McLamb has let go of the four or five or six others (reports varied) who last time functioned as the Love Language, now doing the mad genius thing by himself, aided and abetted by producer BJ Burton. The end result is a less lo-fi Love Language, but no less loose and energetic.

“Heart to Tell” is from the Love Language’s forthcoming Merge Records debut, Libraries, slated for a July release. MP3 via the fine folks at Merge.

Free and legal MP3: CocoRosie

Gentle, invigorating, inscrutable exotica

“Lemonade” – CocoRosie

Ah, CocoRosie: I do not know what planet these two women live on but it is surely a richer and more exotic place than the one the rest of us inhabit. Or maybe it’s just that they inhabit a far greater percentage of this planet than most of us do, being quite the globe-trotting pair of sisters. This new album of theirs alone was recorded in Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Melbourne. Good thing this was before the volcano.

Fortunately, you do not have to understand what they are trying to do, or why, to find yourself captivated by this gentle but invigorating song. A soothing, chime-filled opening measures leads to a lovely piano line, alternating major and minor arpeggios, and the tender but haltingly sung verse. Not sure if it’s Sierra or Bianca here but the phrasing is odd and the words are odder, offering images but no discernible story. A fat synth joins in, and some horns, which play in slow motion but lead to the jaunty, double-time chorus, enlivened now by some deep, rubbery drums. Lyrical clues now tell us we are in childhood memory territory, but there’s still no narrative, just image-moments, and a magic realism sort of sensibility (“Shot a rabbit from the backseat window”?). But with the Casady sisters, given their unusual, itinerant childhood, this could all be a simple tale of a family outing. I’m not sure I’d’ve wanted to be there, but I do love hearing about it.

“Lemonade” is from the duo’s new album, Grey Oceans, which is coming out next month on Sub Pop Records. MP3 via Sub Pop.

Fingertips Flashback: Vague Angels (from December 2006)

I always liked this free-flowing, structure-free song for relatively mysterious reasons. And this seems longer ago than it was, somehow. Anyway, this never really caught on, but it’s still online, so here you are.

I always liked this one for relatively mysterious reasons. And this seems longer ago than it was, somehow. Anyway, this never really caught on, but it’s still online, so here you are.


[From “This Week’s Finds,” December 17-23,2006]

“The Vague Angels of Vagary” – Vague Angels

Even though this came out in March and has nothing whatever to do with Christmas or the holiday season of any kind, I like featuring a song by a band named Vague Angels this week. It seems like all we can hope for these days, and maybe all we actually need. And never mind any of that: this free-flowing, structure-free song is itself extraordinarily cool. Rolling firmly to a strong yet elusive train-like rhythm, “The Vague Angels of Vagary” seems, well, vaguely to be about trains, and journeys, and searches. NYC-based singer/songwriter/novelist Chris Leo (brother of Ted) speak-sings the odd but engaging lyrics like Lou Reed with a higher voice and no leather jacket; he seems more bemused by what he sees that pissed off. What hooks me with this one: the energetic, good-natured, descending guitar riff that keeps the song afloat–relentlessly it climbs back to its apex and spills yet again downward while Leo goes on about train track tundras and the WPA and the MTA. “The Vague Angels of Vagary” is from the CD Let’s Duke It Out At Kilkenny Katz’ (yes there’s that weird floating apostrophe in the title), released earlier in the year by Pretty Activity. The MP3 is via the Pretty Activity site; thanks to the Deli for the head’s up.

ADDENDUM: It doesn’t seem that the Vague Angels have been up to anything since 2006. According to a busy and difficult to read MySpace page, Chris Leo put out a solo album under his own name in 2009, but there is no other sign of it on the web. Leo had his own blog for a while but hasn’t posted since January 2009. He may currently be living in Italy. He is still Ted Leo’s brother.

Free and legal MP3: Color of Clouds (lovely blend of acoustic and electronic)

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

“Brother” – Color of Clouds

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

And things only get better from here in a song blending the acoustic and electronic in a most gracious manner–the instrumental palette here is nothing short of delightful–and building towards a brilliant, light-footed chorus. I still can’t tell if that’s some sort of steel guitar in there or a nuanced synthesizer, but those are definitely stringed instruments that arrive for a first visit at 0:57, returning with the chorus to mesh almost heart-breakingly with that steel-guitar-ish sound and, most nimbly, that subtle persistent electronic glitch in the beat. And yes I’m afraid this is one of those songs that’s far more trouble to describe than to listen to. Rest your eyes and reward your ears with repeated listens.

All three band members were previously in the electronic band Moonraker, and Scarr has also been a frequent collaborator with Moby. “Brother” is a song from the debut Color of Clouds album, Satellite of Love, released digitally this week via Stuhr Records. MP3 via One Track Mind.

Free and legal MP3: Broken Social Scene (involving single from veteran Canadian collective)

Harboring as many as 19 people in its fold, the veteran Canadian ensemble Broken Social Scene is one of those loosely organized “collectives” that the indie rock scene has often favored. But on its first album in five years, Forgiveness Rock Record, set for release next month, the group was prepared to act more like a stripped-down (for them) six-man band, largely because of difficulties getting everyone together to record.

“World Sick” – Broken Social Scene

Harboring as many as 19 people in its fold, the veteran Canadian ensemble Broken Social Scene is one of those loosely organized “collectives” that the indie rock scene has often favored. But on its first album in five years, Forgiveness Rock Record, set for release next month, the group was prepared to act more like a stripped-down (for them) six-man band, largely because of difficulties getting everyone together to record. And so the six prime movers–led by co-founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning–did the writing and arranging; but in the end, go figure, pretty much everyone showed up after all, including Amy Millan and Evan Cranley from Stars, Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw from Metric, Leslie Feist, and some 15 others. It just can’t be a BSS record without a crowd.

“World Sick” is the album’s lengthy opening track, an almost seven-minute composition with the big bashy sound of an anthem, the unhurried development of a prog-rock opus, and an itchy-echoey ambiance that stitches its ambitions together. The band is guitar-heavy (four of the core six are guitarists) but uses its instrument of choice judiciously. What we get is nothing like the muddy, canceling-out effect of those silly rock-celebrity gatherings when they bring nine guitarists on stage to celebrate someone’s birthday and you can’t hear any of them. Here, it’s all about dynamics, about presenting an effective spectrum of sounds from soft to loud, from individual notes to chords, from melodic lines to crashing walls of noise. And while I’m normally not too keen on long instrumental outros, I don’t mind this one, both for its subtle interplay of guitar and rhythm and nature sounds and for the thematic statement it makes in the context of its somewhat inscrutable but obviously world-weary lyrics.

Forgiveness Rock Record is due out next month on the Toronto-based Arts & Crafts label. MP3 via Magnet Magazine

Free and legal MP3: Colleen Brown (girl-group theatrics meets D. Springfield)

“Boyfriend” marches to a big, retro, triplet-driven beat, delivering a vibe that’s part girl-group theatrics, part Dusty Springfield-style R&B, part something elusive and (dare I say it?) new.

“Boyfriend” – Colleen Brown

“Boyfriend” marches to a big, retro, triplet-driven beat, delivering a vibe that’s part girl-group theatrics, part Dusty Springfield-style R&B, part something elusive and (dare I say it?) new.

This is in fact a quality that strikes me again and again about Canadian musicians, if I may generalize (and I assume positive generalizations are somewhat less irritating than negative generalizations!): their capacity for drawing upon influences without either drowning in them or negating them through archness and irony. Here, Edmonton-based singer/songwriter Colleen Brown–with a slightly dusky voice, some sly lyrics, and an easy way with a time-shifting melody–has built a song and a sound clearly grounded in the past while managing, at the same time, to resist painting herself into a history-centric corner. I’m not exactly sure how this works up there north of the border but I appreciate it every time I hear it. In any case, “Boyfriend,” with its driving stomp and gleeful vocal energy, is very much a winner in the here and now.

You’ll find the song on Brown’s second solo album, Foot in Heart, which was re-released last month by Dead Daisy Records, an independent label run by Canadian singer/songwriter Emm Gryner. The album had been previously self-released in 2008. Brown has also recorded as a part of a duo called the Secretaries. MP3 via Spinner.

Fingertips Flashback: Dealership (from December 2004)

A certain sort of confidence is required to open a song with the line “Let’s go, and I’ll play all my songs,” but singer Chris Groves has such a sweet-sailing voice that he has me right there–I’m thinking, sure, go ahead, play away. A do-it-yourself style trio from San Francisco, Dealership transcends its indie trappings through gorgeous melodicism and songwriting aplomb.

Here’s an innocent burst of indie-electro-something-or-another that sounds as delightful to me now as it did five-plus years ago.


“Forest” – Dealership

[ from “This Week’s Finds,” Dec. 5-11, 2004]

A certain sort of confidence is required to open a song with the line “Let’s go, and I’ll play all my songs,” but singer Chris Groves has such a sweet-sailing voice that he has me right there–I’m thinking, sure, go ahead, play away. A do-it-yourself style trio from San Francisco, Dealership transcends its indie trappings through gorgeous melodicism and songwriting aplomb. The song is propelled by the juxtaposition of a jittery/infectious guitar line against a bell-like (and inexpensive-sounding) keyboard underneath a melody that cascades on itself, like noiseless fireworks arcing pattern upon pattern. When Groves arrives at the chorus, singing, “An electronic forest, a pixelated version” and then whatever he sings next (I can’t decipher the words at that point), we are in a certain sort of pop heaven. That guitarist Miyuki Jane Pinckard adds some solid yet airy (go figure) harmonies to the proceedings only adds to the feeling of being transported somewhere quite lovely, if a little bittersweet. I like how the band doesn’t waste the last minute of the song (which is when a lot of songs go into automatic pilot): listen to the edge Groves’ voice acquires at around the 2:15 point, and then feel the band pull the energy back at around 2:30 only to kick into a punched-up sprint to the finish at 2:50 or so. It’s all pretty subtle but I tend to like subtle. “Forest” is from the CD Action/Adventure, the band’s third, released in August on Turn Records; the MP3 can be found on the band’s web site.

ADDENDUM: Founded in 1995 (wow), Dealership may, alas, no longer exist. The band’s web site shows no sign of life since 2007, and the band’s anticipated fourth album, due first in 2007 and then in 2008, seems never (yet) to have arrived. While Wikipedia has them existing to the present day, the entry itself hasn’t been updated since late ’07.

Free and legal MP3: Stanley Ross (slow & swingy w/ a nod to bygone styles)

“Bicycle” is fetchingly slow and swingy in a way that tips its hat to bygone stylings such as doo-wop and torch songs and the Rolling Stones trying to do country. And yet the music is at the same time entirely un-nostalgic–it is performed simply, without affect, with a grounding organ line, some nice back-porch guitar work, and a winning smidgen of idiosyncrasy in the guise of Nick Meiers’ slightly neurotic (I mean that in a good way) tenor.

“Bicycle (Take So Long)” – Stanley Ross

“Bicycle” is fetchingly slow and swingy in a way that tips its hat to bygone stylings such as doo-wop and torch songs and the Rolling Stones trying to do country. And yet the music is at the same time entirely un-nostalgic–it is performed simply, without affect, with a grounding organ line, some nice back-porch guitar work, and a winning smidgen of idiosyncrasy in the guise of Nick Meiers’ slightly neurotic (I mean that in a good way) tenor. None of this would work, I don’t think, with a more straightforward singer. But Meiers has an edgy voice that gives the impression of being more wavery than it actually is, an effect that–I like to imagine–is being generated by his shaking his head so deeply in time to the music’s slow-burning groove that he’s sometimes missing the microphone. This is no doubt an inaccurate conjecture but I’ll stick with it anyway.

Stanley Ross is another one of those “hm; is this a person taking on a stage name or is this a band?” acts. Press material is shifty on the matter. I do know that Meiers, the Chicago-based front man and singer/songwriter, has himself called Stanley Ross his “band,” and the Facebook page lists three “members” so let’s stick with band. In any case, “Bicycle (Take So Long)” is a song from Stanley Ross’s third release, an EP called MN-EP, which follows two previous full-length albums. The EP is out this week and may be downloaded in its entirety for free via the netlabel RockProper.com.

Free and legal MP3: Making Movies (crunchy Spanish-language rock)

Crisp and crunchy Spanish-language, Latin-spiked rock’n’roll from…Kansas City, somehow. Get this one going and check out how easily your body wants to keep the beat even as the music itself seems to snake and sway in and around but never, it seems, directly on that same beat.

<"La Marcha" – Making Movies

Crisp and crunchy Spanish-language, Latin-spiked rock’n’roll from…Kansas City, somehow. I’ll take it from wherever; to my ears, Latin rhythms are a natural for rock’n’roll–we haven’t over the years heard nearly enough of them in any sort of mainstream way (whether mainstream mainstream or, as it were, indie mainstream).

“La Marcha” vigorously exploits the dynamics of a style of music called cumbia, which is known for melding a lopsided rhythm to a steady 4/4 beat. Get this one going and check out how easily your body wants to keep the beat even as the music itself seems to snake and sway in and around but never, it seems, directly on that same beat. One of the delights of that group-sung grunt (first heard at 0:10) is how precisely on the beat it is, compared to almost everything else that emerges from the drums and guitars. I also like how effectively the band works a slightly distorted rhythm guitar sound, straight from the rock’n’roll textbook, into the chorus, and how it leads with the Latino chord changes in a gratifying way. Don’t miss, also, when the band drifts seamlessly into a salsa montuno (you may not know what that is but you’ll hear it) for an instrumental rave-up at 1:56.

“La Marcha” can be found on the album In Dea Speramus, which the quartet self-released last month. The album, by the way, was pretty much recorded live, vocals and instruments together in real time–yet another reason this song has so much energetic allure.